Fine Art

When you think of conceptual, high-fashion photo shoots, you imagine big budgets. Turns out, couture shoot concepts don’t have to cost more than $100. Professional photographer Amanda Diaz is demonstrating how to do just that right now during her CreativeLive class aimed to help photographers concept, style, and capture stunning images on a true DIY budget.

Greek fine art photographer Vassilis Tangoulis creates beautiful, dreamlike landscapes through lengthy exposures in his black and white series “Misty Scapes;” incorporating the “fourth dimension” of time into his work. Over the course of the exposures, fog swirls around a tree, a boat, or a grouping of rocks; erasing smaller details in the surrounding landscape to highlight the central subject.

Thirty years after their original collaboration for Koyaanisqatsi, filmmaker Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass are at it again with documentary where the audience is placed in an unusual situation: watching the varied expressions of others interacting with technology. This video, an Fstoppers exclusive, gives you a look into the mind of Godfrey Reggio while making the film.

Jonathon Keats is an American conceptual artist based in San Francisco. This year Jonathon began a new project he calls Century Camera in which he (and the people of Berlin) hide 100 pinhole cameras with the hopes of creating the first series of century-long exposures. Jonathon was kind enough to make time to speak with me and share the details, inspiration, and process behind this ambitious project — you don't want to miss this.

In this episode of National Geographic Live!Peter Essick talks about the journey of creating his new book, The Ansel Adams Wilderness, and what it's like to pay tribute to (and follow in the tripod holes of) perhaps the greatest nature photographer to walk the planet. The work interprets the influence of Adams' work for a digital age, capturing the Sierra Nevada wilderness in a manner that can only be described as timeless.

Photographer Ingrid Bugge’s multimedia series 'The Essence of Ballet’ is the result of over two years in residence with the Danish Royal Ballet, documenting its dancers both during performances and behind the scenes. Employing a variety of digital manipulations, Bugge goes beyond photography to capture the “essence of ballet” as a dynamic, fluid experience.

Portuguese photographer Gonzalo Bénard’s ongoing ‘Totem’ series features richly detailed black and white photographs which explore the idea of coming back to one’s roots in an effort to “listen and learn with our own nature.” Often using himself as a subject (as is the case with ‘Totem’), Bénard’s work explores themes of expression and social relationships through photography.

Photographer Tyler Shields sat on a 7 month waiting list to acquire a rare and in-demand $100,000 Crocodile Birkin bag... and fed it to an alligator all for the sake of art. These images are part of his fine art series “Indulgence,” which is set to premiere in galleries in Los Angeles and London shortly. See some of the final images below. What do you think of them?

Maia Flore’s ‘ImagineFrance’ series takes its audience on a fantastical tour of 25 famous sites in France, from the gardens of Versailles in the north to the Pont du Gard in the south. Featuring Flore and her partner, artist Jeremy Joseph, as models, the pair traveled throughout France to capture whimsical, modern relationships to historical cities and monuments.

French photographer Christine Muraton’s series 'Inversed Metaphysics' features hauntingly beautiful portraits which evoke a sense of solitude and restlessness. Muraton states that the series is intended to address issues of transcendence, the search for truth, and the nature of consciousness.

This truly incredible image was produced by Lightfarm Studios and was composited over a 5 week period "by seamlessly matte painting over 100 aerial pictures of giant proportions." This original artwork piece was inspired by the book “Rendezvous with Rama” by Arthur C. Clarke and the end product is nothing short of a masterpiece.

German photographer Martin Klimas is known for his work surrounding high speed photography to capture moments otherwise invisible to the human eye. His project, Sonic Sculptures, enables the viewer to visualize the impact of sound as streams of colorful paint are thrown upward by sound waves from a speaker.

There's something special about taking a picture on film. That said, film also lent itself to a lot of error: a botched exposure, missed focus and light leaks could all serve to ruin an otherwise lovely image. There are few things more frustrating then getting a roll back from the lab with an error note on the envelope. Occasionally the results were a novelty, perhaps adding interest to an otherwise boring image but all too often light leak was nothing but a bother. So why would anyone want to replicate it in Lightroom?

Why We Create, a series by director/cinematographer Andy Newman, features artists and what drives them. This video is the second installment with portrait photographer Nick Fancher but I highly recommend watching all that Andy has to offer as the series will remind you why we got into photography in the first place (An easy thing to forget when on the hustle for clients). Now if you'll excuse me I feel the need to get out and create something. Enjoy the video.